


I Know You Have a Heavy Heart (I Can Feel It When We Kiss)

by loonyBibliophile



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Mentions of alcoholism, Multi, Non-Sburb, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Vague mentions of physical and sexual abuse, death mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 03:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5232644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loonyBibliophile/pseuds/loonyBibliophile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk Strider was born without a soul mark, romantic or platonic. But he wasn’t without one for long. The very next day, a tiny circuit board bloomed on the back of his infant neck, just at the top of his spine. Roxy Lalonde was born with hers, the same symbol, the same place. Flat black, small, matching. All the signs of a platonic soulmate mark. Neither of them had romantic marks yet. As he grew old enough to know what the mark meant, the lack of a romantic one didn’t really bother him. Dirk was far more interested in building things and fighting things than romance. Roxy, however, waited every day for a new mark to appear on her skin, the brightly colored symbol of a romantic soulmate. But it never came.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Know You Have a Heavy Heart (I Can Feel It When We Kiss)

Dirk Strider was born without a soul mark, romantic or platonic. But he wasn’t without one for long. The very next day, a tiny circuit board bloomed on the back of his infant neck, just at the top of his spine. Roxy Lalonde was born with hers, the same symbol, the same place. Flat black, small, matching. All the signs of a platonic soulmate mark. Neither of them had romantic marks yet. As he grew old enough to know what the mark meant, the lack of a romantic one didn’t really bother him. Dirk was far more interested in building things and fighting things than romance. Roxy, however, waited every day for a new mark to appear on her skin, the brightly colored symbol of a romantic soulmate. But it never came. 

The platonic soulmates finally met when they were ten years old. Dirk had lived in southern California his whole life, raised by his movie producer older brother, who refused to talk about the soul mark turned scar over his heart. Once, it had been a brilliantly green Niels-Bohr atomic model. Now it was white, scarred over. The sign of a dead soulmate. It had been that way as long as Dirk could remember, and was part of the reason he’d never bothered worrying about not having one. Roxy had just moved to LA from New York, her famous author mother had decided to relocate for whatever reason. Roxy had never seen her mother’s soul mark, or marks if there were multiple. She wondered if not having a soulmate was genetic. The pair of kids met in the principal’s office of the private school they now both attended. Dirk was there for fighting. Roxy was there for sneaking into the computer lab and breaking the school’s firewall. She sees his mark before he sees hers, because his hair is gelled up from the back of his head, as weird and spiky as his sunglasses are. She stands up and plops down in the seat right next to him. Her neck tingles. He stares forward, unseeing. 

“You’re bleeding.” she offers, crooking a thumb at Dirk’s bleeding knuckles. Dirk nods. “Also we’re soulmates. Nice to meet you. Roxy Lalonde.” She sticks her hand out to shake, and her knuckles are almost as bruised as his are, but her nails are painted bubblegum pink. 

“Dirk.” he shakes her hand. 

“Yeah I know. Your brother is kind of a hot commodity.” 

“Can I see?” Dirk doesn’t clarify, but Roxy understands and nods, flipping easily in her chair and pushing blonde curled hair from the back of her neck. The circuit board pressed into her skin matches his exactly. 

“Did you get in trouble for fighting?” she asks as he continues staring at the back of her neck. He nods, then remembers she’s not looking at him. 

“Yeah.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“Sometimes.” He’s lying, of course. It happens all the time.The school counselor thinks he has an anger problem, but his brother is too busy to deal with it. 

“I broke through the school’s firewall and killed the security network. Oops.” 

“What?” Dirk blinks behind his shades, finally looking away from her mark. Roxy shrugs and turns in her seat, cramming herself into it cross legged. The way both of her legs fold and fit into the narrow chair is the first thing that makes him notice how short and skinny she is. 

“I got bored. Why’d you punch a wall?”

“How do you know I didn’t punch a person?”

“I know what a hand that just punched concrete looks like, dude. I’m surprised you didn’t break your fingers.”

“I missed. He ducked too fast.”

“Why were you aiming for his face?”

“He was a jerk to my friend.” 

“Well, at least you gotta reason. I’m just a delinquent.” Roxy’s eyes sparkle, and Dirk cracks a smile and finally feels like maybe the universe was right to tell him this girl was supposed to be his best friend for the rest of his life. 

Relationships predicted by soul marks don’t always develop fast, but Dirk and Roxy’s friendship did. Maybe it was because Roxy was new, didn’t have any other friends, and Dirk was sort of weird, and didn’t really have any other friends than a weird kid named Rufioh who spent most of his time with a tiny Japanese girl that terrified literally everyone. It also might have been their well meaning but busy and frequently absent guardians. Loneliness is a powerful motivator. 

Years had gone by, and the two were still impossibly close. Inseparable really. Before people saw their marks, they often thought the two were romantic soulmates, not platonic ones, though that was mostly because Roxy was a very physically affectionate person, and Dirk cared about her too much to deny her. They were both 14, both in 11th grade, having been bumped up twice at the end of elementary school. Neither of them had gotten a romantic mark yet, and most people assumed neither of them ever would. Fourteen years was a big age difference. 

“Does it ever make you sad?” Roxy mumbles, pressing herself against Dirk’s back and tracing his soul mark idly with one manicured nail. He tried to ignore how many of her ribs he can feel through his t-shirt and the churning in his gut when he remembers her mother still hasn’t noticed. 

“Not really. I think maybe I don’t have one because I don’t really… think I feel that way about people? I’ve never really had a crush on anyone. Plus, nothing says you can’t still find love.” He tacks the last sentence on more for her benefit that his. He knows it makes her sad. 

“I know… but it’s a nice thought isn’t it? Someone meant just for you?” she sighs sadly and slumps against him on her living room couch. He reaches around and ruffles her hair to try and get her to smile. 

“Can I stay here tonight?” she mumbles against the fabric of his tshirt, wrapping around him like a particularly bony cat. “Mom is having a party.” 

“Yeah. You know you can stay whenever you want. My brother’s usually not here and I don’t think he really cares.” 

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Wanna order pizza?”

“Mm. What about Chinese? I want noodles.”

“Chinese it is.”

It’s not unheard of for platonic soulmates to share beds, but it is unusual. Roxy doesn’t remember when she started curling up in Dirk’s bed instead of in the guest room when she stayed over, but he’d never even protested. She had less nightmares when she was with him. She didn’t talk about the incidents much, other than the one time she explained in as much detail as she could handle about a child psychologist she only ever called Doc and what he’d done to her and how she thought maybe that was why her mother had moved them across the country. Dirk had held her, something he did not do frequently, and when she finished crying, he told her about seeing his parents die, in the backseat of a convertible, the only survivor of the car accident. His brother had been out of town. She’d always wondered where he got the strange scar on his neck, and after that she’d known. Regardless, they’d quickly discovered they slept better together, but never told anyone. There were enough whispers about codependency from the staff at school as it was. 

They graduate early, but defer admission to CalPoly until they turn eighteen, spending the two years between high school and college travelling, running away from the reputation Roxy gained when she had a nervous breakdown their senior year and got carried away to the hospital at one of her mother’s book launches. Dirk hadn’t slept for three days. He’d thought he was going to lose her. She’d collapsed, she’d been drinking and not eating, her body had been freezing when he tried to shake her awake. He kept bothering the nurses, asking if the mark on his neck was fading. When she finally opened her eyes, he crawled into her hospital bed and fell asleep. It would be years until she saw him look that vulnerable again. It was also the first time her chest twinged in a way that made the back of her neck tickle, but she pushed that away, swept it to the back of her mind. 

Dirk meets Jake English his and Roxy’s first semester at CalPoly. Jake is an exchange student, from some obscure British isle and for the first time in his life Dirk knows what it feels like to want someone. For the first time, he wishes maybe he had a soul mark other than just Roxy’s. But Jake doesn’t have a romantic mark, either. He has a platonic one though, a black oak leaf on the back of his hand that matches one on a hand that belongs to Jane Crocker, who’s the reason he chose California for his time abroad in the first place. She goes to school at the CIA, training to be a pastry chef. 

“Were your parents soulmates?” Dirk asks one night, laying in Jake’s bed. Jake shrugged. 

“I don’t know, really. I never met them. I lived with my grandmother until she died. She had a soulmate, but I think think they ever met. She said sometimes soulmates aren’t born at the right time, and they miss each other. She said she got her mark only a few years before she died.”

“What was it?” Dirk asks gently.

“It was a reel of film. Black and red, right over her heart.” 

After that, Dirk wonders if maybe he and Jake don’t have each other’s marks because his brother and Jake’s grandmother were meant to be soulmates, but his brother was born too late. He never asks. He never knows for sure. Not until Jake breaks up with him. 

“It’s not that I don’t care about you… I think I’m just realizing I don’t really experience romantic feelings. I’ve been talking to Jane about it, she says that’s a thing. Aromantic, I think she called it?” Jake frowns, apologetic, and Dirk bites back a laugh. Jake looks offended, and he shakes his head. 

“I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because until I met you I thought I was aromantic. it’s just funny, in an ironic, vaguely depressing way.”

“Oh. You mean... you...” 

“Love you? Yeah, but it’s alright. You can’t help how you feel, and I’ll get over it. After all, I’ve got Roxy.”

“She cares about you very much.”

“She’s my platonic soulmate.” Dirk shrugs. 

“I know… just be careful.” Jake answers cryptically, before patting Dirk on the shoulder and leaving. He goes back home not long after that, but they stay in touch. He makes a good friend. 

Roxy dates more than Dirk does, but less seriously. Something in her drives her to try and find someone she can love, really love. It’s the way her whole spine glows with warmth when Dirk touches the base of her neck where it meets her spine, tracing the circuitry of her mark. She dates a musician with slicked back hair and a horrible smoking habit. It lasts a few months, until he cheats on her, and she kicks him in the balls and let’s Dirk take a blow at his jaw. In the end, one of the people she dates is the catalyst for the very change she’s been avoiding. Porrim is her name, and she’s older and the sweetest person Roxy has ever met, and tattoos wind over her whole body. They’re making out in Roxy’s bed one night, and Porrim’s fingers brush the back of her neck, the place where Dirk’s mark is, and suddenly Roxy can’t do it anymore. Reality sinks in and she feels cold and tired and just wants to go home. Nevermind she’s in her own apartment. 

“I understand.” Porrim whispers, tucking a lock of Roxy’s hair back from her face. “I fell in love with a platonic soulmate once too.” 

“Is that what all the tattoos are for? To hide it?”

“Yes, some of them.”

“It didn’t end well?”

“Unfortunately, no. But not just because I loved them. They also just weren’t the person I thought they were.”

“But I thought even platonic soulmates were supposed to be forever.” Roxy hugs her knees to her chest. Porrim smiles at her sadly. 

“Even the universe makes mistakes, Roxy. I should go home. It’s been lovely getting to know you.”

“We can be friends, right?”

“Of course, silly.” she blows Roxy a kiss and leaves quietly. Roxy huffs, claws at her neck, blows her hair out of her face, and falls asleep in her clothes. 

It wakes her up in the middle of the night. Her whole back is warm and buzzy, all along her spine. She clenches her eyes shut until she gets to the mirror in her walk-in closet, hoping to the universe and any deity it may contain that, against all odds, her back will be unchanged. But she opens her eyes and there it is. The circuit board is gone, and in its place is a sword, running the length of her spine. There’s a stone in the hilt, just between her shoulder blades, and the base of the hilt is where the circuit board once was. There’s no question who it’s for. Dirk fences. The stone is the same sunrise orange as Dirk’s eyes. The sword doesn’t look like it’s trying to pierce her back. It follows the shape of her spine. As if it was supporting her. Roxy sits down on the bathroom floor, still shirtless, and sobs. She wakes up there the next morning. 

She goes to Porrim’s apartment, ignoring texts from Dirk asking if she wants to go get lunch later. 

“I didn’t know who else to tell.” she says to the confused look on Porrim’s face when Roxy is standing in her doorway. 

“What happened?” Porrim asks, but somewhere in her gut she knows. Roxy can tell. Roxy steps in, closing the door behind her, and pulls her shirt over her head. The middle of the blade is covered by Roxy’s bra band, but the rest is easily visible, the top of the hilt where her old mark once was barely covered by her unbrushed hair. 

“Oh, Roxy.” Porrim murmured, her voice sad. “Oh darling, I’m so sorry.” 

“I don’t know what to do. What if he doesn’t want to be my friend anymore? What if… What if his mark is gone? What if I’m not even that to him, anymore? I can’t lose him, Porrim, he’s the only person who’s always been there. I don’t know what to do without him.”

“Maybe.. just don’t tell him for awhile? And go see him. Check on his mark. I’m sure it’s still there. He cares about you, Roxy. More than I think most people care about their soulmates of any persuasion. If any bonded set I know can survive a mess like mismatched marks, it’s the two of you.” Porrim squeezes Roxy’s shoulder and attempts to smile supportively. 

After a few hours at Porrim’s, Roxy finally responded to Dirk’s texts, and told him she would come by soon. She stopped at her apartment, putting on a loose hoodie, so the drape of the hood would cover the entirety of the back of her neck. Dirk probably wouldn’t notice. She was always cold anyway. 

“Hey, sorry. I was with Porrim.” she said, faux breezy, as she let herself into his apartment, just down the hall from hers. 

“You could have just said you were on a date, Rox.” his nickname feels like a bullet. 

“We broke up.” before he can speak, she shakes her head. “Don’t worry, it was mutual. I don’t need to cry and you don’t need to punch her.”

“I would never punch Porrim. She scares the shit out of me.” he pats the couch, and she sits down on the other side from him. If he makes a face, she doesn’t notice it. Or pretends she doesn’t, anyway. But after a half an hour of sitting so far from him, she misses him, and she remembers she needs to look for his mark. She flops back over to his side, and she sees him quirk the tiniest of smiles. She swallows. Honestly, could anyone really blame her for falling for him? He’d looked out for her their entire lives. He’d never not been there when she needed him, even when he’d been with Jake he’d come running to her when she had a breakdown. It was heady, being someone’s first priority. Being the person they loved most, even if it was in a different way than she loved him. She slides herself between him and the back of the sofa. The small space makes her feel safer and warmer, and this way she can see his neck without looking suspicious. She lets out an unconscious sigh of relief when her circuit board is still on his neck. She puts her arms around his waist, and she can sense him rolling his eyes as she buries her face into his back. At some point, in the middle of a Monumental Mysteries marathon, she falls asleep.

Dirk shakes her awake, the sun long since set, grinning slightly to himself. Roxy was like a cat. She could fall asleep anywhere. Especially if he was there. 

“Come on, Rox. Let’s go to bed.” 

Stirring finally, she shook her head. 

“Can’t stay. Gotta go home.” 

“Rox, you sleep at my place all the time.” he tries not to frown.

“Can’t. Uh. Cats. Yeah, cats.” she nods, still half asleep, kisses Dirk cheek and pats his shoulder, and stumbles into the hall. He almost follows her, but he knows he doesn’t really have a reason to. She can’t be drunk, he’d been with her for hours, she was fine about Porrim. She must have just wanted some space, or something. Dirk tried not to think about what that might mean, considering they had almost always rather have been together than apart. 

Roxy has several nightmares that night, but she can’t crawl out of bed and walk to Dirk’s apartment. They always start out on separate sides of the bed but wake up with him spooned around her, like he thought he could physically shield her from her nightmares. But if they woke up like that, there’s no way he’d miss the changed sign on the back of her neck. There was no way he’d let her stay anymore. Everything would change and the thought made her want to cry. So she turned on all the lights and pulled Crookcranks the cat into her bed and slept with the lights on. It didn’t get rid of the dreams, but it helped. She woke up for good at six am, after a particularly brutal nightmare about the Doc. She sorely missed Dirk then, because whenever she said she’d dreamt of the Doc, he’d pull her close and tell her, in detail, how he’d hurt him if he got the chance. It made her feel safer. She didn’t feel very safe right now. 

It’s not that cold out, but when Roxy gets dressed she wraps a scarf around her neck. Hiding the mark makes her feel unpleasant, like she’s hiding it because she’s ashamed of him, but she doesn’t feel like she has a choice. She knows that Dirk gets up at six to shower, and thus should be awake and out and clean by 7:30, so she goes to the grocery store, and then to the coffee shop, before going over to Dirk’s apartment. 

Something is wrong. Dirk has felt it for weeks, and he’s starting to worry. Ever since she and Porrim broke up, Roxy had been wearing scarves or hoodies. Roxy intentionally covering more of her skin was never a good sign. He watched her carefully. She seemed to be eating normally. She hadn’t started smoking again. She wasn’t drinking. A thought scratched at him, but he didn’t want to ask her until he had no other options. She’s sitting on his couch, away from him, so strangely far away from him and he misses her being close, but mostly he’s worried about the baggy hoodie she’s wearing again. 

“Rox.” he speaks quietly. He doesn’t want to spook her. 

“Hm?” she doesn’t even look at him. 

“Rox, take off the jacket. It’s not even cold.”

“...Why?”

“Just… please?” he offers something in exchange, pushing his shades into his hair. She can’t say no now. So she sighs, and she takes off the hoodie. Dirk heaves a sigh of relief, and Roxy looks at him, confused. 

“I was afraid you were hurting yourself.” he makes a face somewhere between worried and guilty, and Roxy puts her hand on the back of her neck as he pulls her in for a hug. He moves to shift her hand, inevitably to trace the mark they’re supposed to share, and she clenches her eyes shut but let’s him. He had to find out eventually. His hand picks up hers and she can feel it in his body when he sees it. He stills, tenses. 

“I’m so sorry.” she whispers, holding back tears. “I… I shouldn’t have hid it but I didn’t know what to do. I thought you’d push me away. Which you could. You can. I’ll understand… I know you don’t… you know.” 

Dirk doesn’t say anything, for several minutes he just stares. His first thought is that there’s a chance it’s not his, but that’s absurd. It replaced his mark and there was only one reason that happened. His second thought was anger, not at Roxy, but at the universe, for doing this to her. For unloading a problem on them he couldn’t fix. 

“No. I’m sorry. You don’t have to be sorry.” his voice is sad, and something inside Roxy breaks. 

“I knew it was going to happen. I think I… I think I kept it off a long time. Dating around, denial, avoidance. But the night Por and I broke up, we were kissing and she touched the circuit board mark and suddenly I just… I couldn’t do it anymore. And the next morning. Well. You can guess.” She shrugged. Her face was carefully blank. “I’ll understand if you want some time away from me or like, don’t wanna do certain stuff anymore.” 

“I’m really sorry.” he says again, and all Roxy does is nod sadly, and pat the side of his face, and slip out of his door before he even knows what happened. 

An hour later, he’s sitting at his laptop, head in his hands, with Jake on the other side of a Skype call. 

“Chum, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what the bugger is going on to begin with. You’ve been sitting like that for twenty minutes nearly.” Jake frowned, clearly concerned. 

“Roxy’s mark changed.” he says into his hands. 

“So… she’s not your platonic soulmate anymore or-?” Jake looks at Dirk confused. Dirk shakes his head, and gives him a Look. “O-oh. Oh, dear. Oh dear that is one very sticky situation.” 

“It’s a sword. Like the universe is saying I’m supposed to be her knight in shining armor, or some shit. How could it just change? We’ve known each other almost a fuckin’ decade, why would it change now?” Dirk sounds desperate. 

“I don’t know, Dirk. I wish I did.” 

“She thinks I won’t want anything to do with her anymore. She just walked out without a word after I apologized.”

“Why didn’t you go after her?”

“I wasn’t sure she wanted me to. I know what it’s like to be in that situation Jake! I was in love with you and you didn’t love me, and not only is she in love with me, the universe has literally told her I’m it for her but she’s not it for me. I have no idea how to deal with that.” 

“I’m sorry, Strider.” 

“Yeah. Me too. I’m… I’m not used to not being able to fix her problems. Get rid of the things that are upsetting her.”

“No wonder the universe thinks you’re her knight in shining armor.”

“Shut up English.”

“Too soon?”

“Too soon.”

Roxy stays away for a week. Dirk is unravelling. He’d called everyone who said they were codependent crazy, but now he was thinking maybe they’d had a point. He was barely sleeping, he was at the gym three times a day, and he hadn’t eaten anything but Taco Bell in like, four days. He wonders, laying in bed at night, if his mark will fade eventually. If one day the circuit board on his neck will be gone. Or maybe a scar, like his brother’s. His brother. Maybe his brother could help. 

“Yeah?” Dave picked up on the fourth ring. 

“Uh. It’s Dirk.” 

“I know, kid. You’re in my phone contacts. Sup?”

“I um. I need to talk?”

“... Like. Seriously?”

“Yeah. Something sort of. Happened.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not dying or in the hospital or anything if that’s what you mean?”

“Oh shit… Roxy isn’t in the hospital again is she?”

“No, no, but this. Does have to do with her.”

“What’s up, kid?”

“Her soul mark changed.”

“What?”

“From the platonic one that matched mine to a romantic one. A romantic one for me.”

“Oh.”

“Mine’s. Still the circuit board.”

“Shit.” 

“I haven’t seen her in a week and I think I’m losing my mind.” 

“So… you don’t…?”

“I don’t even know if I like girls, Dave. I’ve only ever had feelings Jake. And until then I just assumed I didn’t have a romantic soul mark because I just… didn’t feel things like that.” 

“Why are you asking me what to do?”

“You had like… a complicated situation too right? I mean. We always suspected, but I told you about Jake’s grandmother.” 

“Oh. Yeah. I guess that makes sense. I don’t know kid. I don’t think there’s anything to do but try to keep going. You want her around, right?”

“Of course I do!” Dirk sounds offended at even the vaguest implication he wouldn’t. “I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s… She’s my… Roxy.” 

“Then you do whatever it takes. That’s what you do when you love someone, kid. And I’ve seen you two for long enough and known her long enough to be able to say with some confidence that she ain’t gonna come after you. Roxy’s just like you, Dirk, she’s gotta a whole lot going for her, but not much she really cares about. But she cares about you, and if she thinks staying away is the way to keep you around, she’d stay away forever.” 

“...Thanks.” Dirk says finally, after a long pause. 

“I know I’m not the best brother, Dirk. I’m not an idiot. I’ve always been too busy and too distant, it’s the family curse. But I do know you. And Roxy, by extension. Butter her up a little. Bring her to my next premiere, I’ll send you guys a swanky car and some nice duds.”

“It’s not just you. It’s me too. But that… is a good idea. Thanks, bro.” 

“S’what family’s for, kid. Later.” 

“Later.” 

An hour later, Dirk knocks on Roxy’s door. She answers, quicker than he would have expected, and she looks like shit. He does too. He doesn’t think either of them has slept. 

“We’re kind of bad at this.” he says, half joke, half apology. 

“Yeah. Just a little.” she smirks, and opens the door wider, and just like that everything feels a little more okay. 

“Why did you leave?” Dirk asks suddenly, and they are both equally surprised. 

“I… I thought you’d want me to. I thought you wouldn’t want me around. Because-because I love you more than I should.” 

Dirk reaches out, slowly, carefully, and pulls Roxy’s hand into his. She looks up at him, he still towers over her after all these years, and frowns, confused. Gently, he tugs her hand around the back of his head, and presses it against the nape of his neck, over his mark. 

“Mixed up feelings or not, your mark is still there. And even if it wasn’t you’d still be my best friend, Rox. We don’t exactly function well without each other, not after all these years.” 

Speaking so bluntly about his feelings makes him uncomfortable, vulnerable, but he knows she needs to hear it. Roxy’s always been like that. Even if she knows something, it isn’t real until it gets acknowledged out loud. Roxy lets out a choking noise that might be a sob or a laugh, he’s not sure, and leans forward, hugging him tightly. 

“Sorry I went MIA. I know that freaks you out. I promise I didn’t do anything stupid. I pretty much was just here.” she waves a hand behind her, and the disaster of delivery boxes in her living room more or less confirms what she’s saying. He would have believed her anyway. 

“Just don’t do it again.” 

“I won’t.” 

“So my brother wants us to come to his next premiere.”

“You mean your brother said you should invite me to his next premiere in case I was mad at you.”

“Correct. But I know you’re going to go anyway because he’s sending us clothes and I know you think he has impeccable taste and you like excuses to be fancy.” 

“Touche.” Roxy winked, and shot finger guns his way. 

A small handful of weeks later, Roxy lets out a low whistle as she unzips a garment bag.

“God your bro has great taste.” The dress she’s admiring is just her style. Soft, rosy pink, high necked but backless, floor length mermaid-cut skirt, and thin, glimmering chains with tiny pink sapphires draped on the shoulders like sleeves. It’s a custom, one of a kind original. Dirk’s brother must have thought he’d fucked up bad. 

“He sent you shoes too.” Dirk offers, handing her a sleek box that contains a pair of towering, glittering Louboutins. 

“Jesus, did you tell him you slept with my mother or something?”

“I told him the truth.” 

“Oh.” It made sense, really. Roxy had heard the tale of Dave and his doomed soulmate, born decades before him. He’d have understood how she felt. It made her a little sad. 

Dirk walks towards her, and habitually goes to rub the back of her neck. It was a common habit of soulmates of any kind, to reach out and touch the other’s mark. But he stops short when he remembers, and Roxy smiles sadly before slipping away to get dressed. 

As per usual, it takes Roxy longer to get ready than Dirk, but only barely. He’s fiddling with his bow tie and fussing over his hair when the bathroom door finally swings open. She’s standing with her back to him, fitting a pair of earrings into all of her various piercings, and the backless nature of the gown bares her entire mark to him for the first time. He wonders for a moment why his brother chose backless, and then he remembers the scars on Roxy’s stomach and chest even she didn’t like to look at, let alone show a red carpet. Inevitably, some reporter was rude enough to ask, and Roxy hated talking about what Doc had done to her. He shook the memories from his head. This was the first time he’d seen the entire mark, and even he had to admit it was something. It looked… nice. Which was a strange thing to think, really. But it did. The long line of metal swayed with the bend of her spine, and the hilt and pommel stretched along her shoulder blades. 

“How do I look?” she asks, finally spinning around. She’s got a choker on that he recognizes, a Christmas present from a few years back. Soft black silk, with gold fastenings and a square gold pendant. Their circuit board, with pink gems marking the circular transmitters from the pattern. Her face is made up as perfectly as ever, though she’s wearing slightly more eye makeup than usual. As always though, she has on her signature Lalonde Black Lipstick. Her hair is curled and coiffed, the dress looked perfect, and she was a good six inches taller, the gold toes of the shoes and her pink pedicure just barely peeking out. 

“You look perfect.” he says, and he means it. He always does. She beams at him and works over, fixing the collar of his tuxedo over the car accident scar on his neck. 

“Thanks, Dirky.” it’s the first time since the sword appeared on her back that’s she’s used that awful nickname, and it makes something turn happily in his stomach. He hadn’t realized she’d stopped. He definitely hadn’t realized he missed it. “You clean up nice too, bee tee dubz.” she winks. 

“Thanks, Rox. And uh, thanks.” the second thanks is meant for covering his scar. She knows, somehow, and nods, smiling softly. “Ready to go?” he extends his elbow with a smirk, and she rolls her eyes and takes it. 

“Let’s go, Stridork.” 

True to over the top Strider family form, the pair has been sent a white stretch limo. LA traffic is predictably awful, and the ride is slow. But it’s the Strider family limousine so there’s a tv and a game system in the back seat, and they pass the time shoving each other and shouting during long matches of Mariokart. Roxy wins. Roxy always wins. Dirk doesn’t let her, she’s just better than him. 

They make their way through the popping flashbulbs of the carpet walk as fast as they can. Their folks might be famous, but they’ve both mostly stayed out of the spotlight since they started college so when they do make appearances, people get curious. People ask a lot of questions about Roxy’s back that they don’t answer. They sit in the back of the theatre for the showing, and whisper through the whole thing, making fun of all the quirks and easter eggs they recognize from a lifetime of exposure to Dave Strider. 

“Do you want to go to the party or just go home?” Dirk asks, how voice low outside the party venue. What he really means is if she thinks it’s safe for her to go to the party. She nods, and squeezes his hand. Roxy heads for a quiet corner immediately, and Dirk goes to get them something non-alcoholic to drink. Roxy avoids the temptation of going anywhere near bars. She’s leaning against the wall, bobbing her head in time to the music, when some older, washed up actor slides up to her. He’d been in some bit part in the movie, and had been walking behind her and Dirk on the red carpet. She figured he wouldn’t bother her too much. He’d seen her back. 

“Hey there, beautiful.” he slurred. Roxy wrinkled her nose. 

“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice obviously impatient. She flicked her eyes around the room for Dirk to see if he was on his way back yet. 

“Would you like to dance?”

“Not especially.” 

“Aww, why not?”

It was about this time, as the man moved to tipped Roxy’s chin up with a finger, that Dirk took notice of the situation. He had two thoughts, almost simultaneously. The first was that he needed to get over there, and fast, because if that man touched Roxy she was going to have him unconscious before he knew what was happening and end up all over the tabloids again. The second was an intense burning desire to know what the fuck this dude thought he was doing hitting on Roxy when Dirk knew he’d seen the sword on her back earlier. His third thought, seconds later as he made his way quickly over to where they were, was to wonder why the hell he’d had the second thought in the first place.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said smoothly, slipping between them just before the man could make contact and slipping an arm around Roxy. His fingers brushed against the mark on her back and shivers crept up her spine. “I’m afraid that’s my soulmate you’re being a letch to. I suggest you leave before I have my older brother have you removed.” Dirk raised an eyebrow high enough to be seen over his shades, and the man gulped and ran. It was an old routine. They’d discovered after the Doc incident it was better for Dirk to step in and play the boyfriend than let Roxy take care of things with her fists. Less publicity, and it was only half a lie anyway. Well, more like a fourth of a lie now. 

“Thanks.” Roxy whispered, leaning heavily into his side. 

“Anytime.” Dirk smoothed her hair. “Wanna go?”

“Yeah. Let’s go home.” 

That night, Roxy crawls into Dirk’s bed for the first time since her mark changed. It had seemed to intimate of a request to make afterwards. But she knew after the near miss with the actor, the nightmares would be bad tonight without him. She stayed on one side of the bed as she fell asleep, only letting herself reach out with her hand. Dirk squeezed her fingers reassuringly. She woke up only a few hours later, whimpering pitifully but with her back warmed by the pressing presence of Dirk’s hands. She didn’t have the strength to shift so his touch wasn’t over the mark. He’d been muttering her name softly, waiting for her to wake. 

“I’d kill him. I’d kill him if I could.” Dirk whispered into her hair, and she hugged him tightly because she needed to and because she knew it was true. When she finally told everyone what had been going on with her once-therapist, she didn’t think anyone had been more furious than Dirk. He’d punched the wall and broken three fingers and nearly gotten arrested for going to the Doc’s house in the middle of the night. Some people might have been disturbed by how intensely Dirk hated that man, even knowing what he did, but that was sort of Dirk and Roxy’s whole thing. It always had been. It was always them above anyone or anything else, and something that hurt one of them hurt the other. One time at a party, Roxy had seen a guy trying to slip something into Dirk’s drink. She’d broken his nose, his collarbone, and bruised one of his ribs. She’d also broken three of her own fingers. Whenever Dirk woke up in a cold sweat, fingers tearing at the scar in his neck, it was Roxy who woke him up, carefully. Sometimes, she’d even press her lips to the scar, right where his throat faded into his chest. And he’d let her, because she was Roxy. He always let her touch him, because he knew how badly she needed the contact and how few people she trusted to touch her. The Doc had ruined her trusting nature. 

Doc had been the first one to say they were too co-dependent, and maybe that’s why they’d ignored the idea for so long. Doc had been nothing but a creepy abusive quack who tried to make Roxy run from Dirk to make her easier to manipulate. And he’d taken a lot more from her than just her trust, and left a fair few scars. Literal and figurative. 

“You’re safe.” Dirk whispered. 

“I know. I’m always safe with you.” Roxy mumbled back, already fading back into sleep. 

Something has shifted, and Roxy is at Dirk’s apartment even more than she was before things got complicated. He doesn’t say anything, because they’ve both always felt a lot better when the other is in their field of vision. At first, Roxy is painstakingly careful to hide her mark at all times. She’s afraid forcing him to see it all the time will make him feel better and ambushed or forced into something. But she can only hide something that takes up the entire expanse of her back so much, and it’s inevitable that from time to time Dirk catches glimpses of the sword that means the universe named her heart his, forever. At first it makes him sad, because the circuit board is gone, and because he can’t be what she needs him to be. What she wants him to be. But after awhile, his feelings about it start to morph, and for awhile he can’t tell what they’ve become. When he figures it out, it causes more questions than answers. He realizes how he feels about seeing it one night when he can’t. It’s winter, and they may live in LA but Roxy is a twig and wearing a heavy sweater. No tiny peek of the mark is visible. And all at once he realizes that he was looking for it. That he was sad he couldn’t see it. And if he was sad he couldn’t see it, that meant he liked that it was there. But why would he like that his best friend had his soul mark on her back when he didn’t have hers? He needed to talk to someone, but he didn’t know who. 

Roxy, for her part, thinks she is dealing with the entire situation remarkably well. It’s helped that she never really thought there was a chance in the first place. Dirk had never shown much interest in dating, and certainly not dating girls. Did she wish she hadn’t gone and fallen in love with him? Yes. But it had happened and her mark had changed and she’d given up trying to change fate around the same time a man who was supposed to be helping her ruined her life and scarred up her stomach with the handle of his stupid cane. And Dirk was still in her life and still her best friend and still cared about her, and honestly that was all that really mattered. 

Dirk has always been slower to fall asleep than Roxy, and this particular night is no different. She’s already dozed off and made quick work of curling into his side, her small hands with their immaculate nails clutching at the ends of his shirt, anchoring her. She’s wearing one of his undershirts, which is far from unusual, and between her angle and its looseness he can see most of the mark on her back and a few of the scars on her stomach. Unthinking, he reaches out, and runs a finger carefully down the length of her spine, feeling the way the mark warms under his touch. Roxy sighs quietly in her sleep, presses her face into his shoulder. Sleep starts to descend on him finally, and in a half asleep stupor he runs a thumb gently across her stomach scars, as if he could erase the old harm with a soft touch. 

“Describe how you feel about Jane.” Dirk says a few days later to Jake over Skype. 

“Wait, why? You’ve a platonic soulmate yourself mate, why do you need my description?”

“Just.. do it please? A favor for a friend?” Dirk is desperate, and he doesn’t know who else to talk to. He can’t ask Jake what love feels like, romantic love anyway, because Jake is aromantic. But he figures he can work backwards from what his friend and ex thinks platonic love feels like, and figure things out from there. 

“Sure, why not, I guess? Well, she’s my best friend. I care for her deeply, and above all i want her to be safe and happy. I don’t know, Dirk, it’s a bit hard to explain in words.”

“Well, thanks for trying.” he tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice, settling for reaching a hand to the back of his neck and pressing on the mark there. 

“Is this about Roxy?” Jake asks. Dirk blinks behind his shades in response. “Right. Okay. Don’t know why I asked that. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Glad we cleared that up at least.”

“But why ask about Jane? Roxy is also your platonic soulmate. You would know what it feels like, wouldn’t you?”

“Jake, you and I both know even for two marked people Rox and I have a weird ass friendship.”

“..Yes, true. Are things alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, things are fine I just… I don’t know what going on.”

“How do you mean?”

“I like seeing her soul mark. I look for glimpses of it, and I’m disappointed when all of it is covered up. I don’t know why. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to ask what to do.”

“Oh.” 

“Yeah. Oh.” 

“I’m afraid I don’t know what to tell you.” 

“That’s okay. It’s kind of nice to tell someone.”

“You know.. I might have a friend who can help?”

“Yeah?” Dirk hated strangers, but he was basically out of options. 

“Her name’s Aradia. I’ll text you her info and let you know you’re going to reach out.”

“Thanks, man.” 

“Anytime, Dirk. Now I have to go. Halley’s scratching at the door for a walk.” 

“Later.” 

“Bye!” 

It turns out Aradia lives not too far away, so they meet up at an out of the way coffee shop. She’s almost as tall as Dirk, and looks like she could strangle a tree. Her hair is long and scraggly and up in a bun, and it looks like she just got done hiking. Which was possible. She was Jake’s friend, after all. Trailing along behind her, looking sullen and exhausted, was a scrawny guy about Dirk’s height wearing glasses. He looked like a lot of the guys in Roxy’s advanced science courses. Her smile is cheerful, though slightly unnerving. 

“Hello! You must be Dirk. I’m Aradia. This is Sollux.” 

“Sup.” Sollux nodded, but didn’t look up from his phone. 

“Don’t mind him. I made him go climbing with me and he’s still whining. Also, he’s incredibly anti-social.”

“It’s cool.” Dirk shrugged. 

“So, Jake told me you had some kind of mark problem?”

“Sort of. Maybe. I don’t really know. That is the problem, I guess.” 

“What exactly is going on?”

“Okay so, I’ve had a platonic soul mark since like, the day after I was born, because Roxy and I, my best friend, were only born a day apart which, yes, I know is a weird as shit coincidence. We didn’t meet until we were ten years old, and things were fine for a long ass time. And then she starts acting weird and I freak out because… I’m just going to be honest. Roxy and I are basically borderline codependent. We share a bed. We haven’t spent more than a week apart in literal years. So when she freaks out, I freak out. I finally go over and she shows me her neck where her mark should be and it’s gone and in its place is romantic soul mark. One clearly meant to represent me. Now, I have had romantic feelings for one person in my entire life, and that was Jake. I don’t have a romantic soul mark. I still have the circuit board platonic mark Rox and I used to share. But I… I like seeing the new mark on her back. I actively look for it. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what to do.” 

“Oh! Yes, I can definitely help with this! See, the same thing happened to us!” she pointed back towards Sollux, and for a minute Dirk was puzzled as to how these two disparate people were soulmates, and then he remembered all the differences between him and Roxy and decided it probably wasn’t that weird. “The thing is, fate, or whatever, that gives us these marks. But loving someone, in any way, is still a choice. It’s still something you have to do. Sollux and I were platonic soulmates and one day his mark changed, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought about it for a really long time, but one day, I decided there wasn’t really anyone else I could ever imagine spending my life with. I decided even if the universe had only wanted me to love him platonically, I could choose to love him other ways too. So I did, and a few days later my mark changed. Fate wants you to think you don’t have a choice, but you do. You really do.” She smiles affectionately at the lanky guy next to her. Sollux rolls his eyes, but returns the smile. 

“But I just… I don’t know.” 

“You have to figure it out. Love isn’t ever the same for anyone. Only you know what it feels like for you.”

“What was.. What was the difference for you? In deciding whether it was platonic or romantic?”

“Honestly? It’s hard to say. But he told me how he felt, and I knew after that even though my mark was still the same I had to figure things out for myself. Mostly I just sat down and I thought about whether I could ever imagine having a person in my life as important as Sollux. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? Your romantic and platonic soulmates, whether you have one of each or many, or whatever, they’re supposed to be equally important. You love them equally in different ways. I couldn’t ever imagine someone being as important to me as he is.” 

“Nerd.” Sollux butted in, sticking his tongue out at Aradia. 

“Shut up Sollux, you are literally wearing Pokemon boxers.” She grinned at him, and rolled her eyes. “There were other things, obviously, like deciding I wanted to kiss him, but it was mostly just that I couldn’t ever see myself putting the time and energy and love and important I put into Sollux into any other relationship.”

While Dirk was out with Aradia, trying to sort out his head, Roxy was sitting in his bed, contemplating the fact that she appeared to have accidentally moved into his apartment. Essentially, the only things of hers still at her own place were her cat, her cat’s litter box, maybe a third of her wardrobe, and her food. The strangest thing about that was that she wasn’t entirely sure when or how that had actually happened. She’d always spent a lot of time at Dirk’s, especially since they were neighbors, but this was a new development. She wondered if she should move some of her things back to her place. In the end, she decided against it and did a load of laundry instead, making sure she didn’t accidentally wash anything of Dirk’s she could dye pink. Suddenly feeling guilty about Crookcranks, she walked over to her apartment, gathered up the cat and the litterbox supplies, and brought her over to Dirk’s. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure he’d notice. If he did, she hoped he wouldn’t care. Things had been better lately, but anxiety over whether or not he’d tire of the awkward situation and push her away still bunched in her spine. Some days she wished she could stand under the hot spray of the shower until she scrubbed the sword off her back to rediscover the circuit board underneath. Most days she was aware of the uselessness of that desire, and let the resignation numb her. But on a small number of days, she was bitter. Not because Dirk didn’t return her feelings, she would never begrudge her best friend anything, especially something so important. But because the universe had seen fit to tell her this person was her soulmate, but she wasn’t his. The almost-but-not-quite-ness of the situation was heavy in her chest and stomach. 

Roxy flopped down on the sofa, and pulled Crookcranks up onto her chest. She purred and licked Roxy’s face. 

“Thanks, Crooks.” she nuzzled the cat’s head with her nose as the fluffy creature settled into her chest, tucking her head under Roxy’s chin. 

“Hey.” Dirk called out as he swung the door open. 

“Hey Stridork. Where were you all afternoon?”

“Talking to some friend of Jake’s he thought could help me out with something.” Dirk shrugged and walked over the couch, lifting up Roxy’s legs before settling down and dropping them into his lap. Instinctively, she tucked her toes between them and under one of his thighs. Her feet were always cold. 

“Oh, okay.” Roxy elected not to press, and went back to scratching her cat’s ears. 

“Hey uh, can I talk to you about something possibly really fuckin’ awkward?”

“If you ask me for boy advice I am going to break your nose”

“No, no, Rox jesus like I’d be that much of a dick. No, I was wondering if you could… explain and help me understand the difference between romantic and non-romantic love.” Dirk scratched his neck, a rare moment of obvious nervousness. 

“Oh.” Roxy said quietly, holding down Crookcranks as she shifted slightly. “Yeah I can try. But I mean, I’d have to use you as an example, and I don’t know how comfortable you’d be with that.” 

“It’s fine.” 

“Okay. Well… I guess it’s just sort of... “ She paused, scrunching up her face. “Obviously, you were always the most important person in the world to me. Our friendship was always different and more important than my other friendships, or even the people I dated. But for the most part I just assumed that was normal, other than a few times where I really had to force down my feelings. Like when I was in the hospital and you crawled into my bed. But essentially what happened was one day I just…. I realized I didn’t want to do the things i did with my dates with them, I wanted to do them with you. I didn’t want to give these other people all this affection and attention, I only wanted to give it to you. 

At the end of the day, you were the person I wanted to share my life with. You, this person who has always been there for me, no matter what, that always put me first, that always just… wanted me to be happy and feel safe. When I wake up in the morning you’re the first person I think of. You’re the last person i think about before I sleep, whether we’re in the same bed or not. When anything happens, good or bad, you’re who I want to talk to about it. And I just could no longer imagine ever feeling that way about anybody but you.” Roxy shrugged, finally ending her speech. Dirk sat there, silent, obviously contemplating. 

“I’m going to try something. And if it doesn’t work, I really need to know you won’t hate me.” Dirk’s mouth was a firm line of determination as he lifted his shades off. Roxy titled her head, puzzled, but nodded. 

“Dirk… I could never hate you.” 

“Okay.” Dirk nodded once, his eyes steely, but they soften as he looked at Roxy for a few seconds. He took a deep breath and reached over, gently moving Crookcranks onto the floor, and grasping both of Roxy’s hands and pulling her over to him. She blinked, growing more confused by the second. He slipped his hand around to the back of her neck, resting along the hilt of the sword imprinted there. Warmth flowed down her spine.He placed his other hand on the side of her face and stroked her cheekbone with his thumb. Roxy, having finally figured out what was happening, was torn between letting it happen and running away. But a few seconds later it was too late for the latter, as Dirk carefully tugged her across the rest of the distance between them, and pressed his lips against hers gently. Against all logic, Roxy allowed herself to melt into him, pressing closer to his familiar warmth and scent. Unthinking, she wrapped her arms around him, one resting on the back of his neck, and the other against his back. He felt warm under her hands. After a few minutes, Dirk pulled back slowly, tipping his forehead against Roxy’s.

“Dirk?” Roxy said softly, her voice uncharacteristically timid. 

Dirk stayed silent for a few moments, feeling the heavy warmth that stretched over his shoulder blades. He had a feeling, but he wanted confirmation before he said anything out loud. 

“I’ll be right back. I promise.” he mumbled, pressing a soft kiss into Roxy’s hair. As she stared after him, confused, he walked into the bedroom, and then the en suite bathroom. He angled himself among the mirrors so her could see his back, and pulled up the tank top he wore. A sigh of relief left him voluntarily as he saw that, stretching from where the circuit board had once been, was a set of three molecular models. Dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin- All in brilliant pink. They spanned from the knot of the top of his spine, where the old mark had been, over the upper left quadrant of his back, over his heart. Fitting, he thought to himself as he remembered those were, essentially, the chemical markers for love. 

“Hey, Rox?”

“Yeah?”

“Close your eyes.”

“What?”

“Just do it?”

“...Okay.” 

Dirk leaned around the door frame, making sure Roxy had indeed closed her eyes. He tugged the shirt over his head and walked back to the couch, where Roxy was seated sideways against the arm, hands over her eyes. Angling himself sideways, he sat down in front of her.

“You can open your eyes now.” he said quietly. 

Hesitantly, Roxy did as he said, but gasped audibly once she could see. Instinctively, she reached a hand out, tracing the thin lines of the structure with her fingers, watching goosebumps trail over Dirk’s skin as she did.

“W-when?”

“Just now.” 

“Because you kissed me?”

“Yes and no. I’ve been… contemplating for awhile that maybe I didn’t have as good as a grasp on my emotions as I’ve always thought I had. At my brother’s party, I felt possessive in a way that was different from my normal protective instincts where you’re involved. I knew that guy had seen your mark and it’s obvious it was representative of me and we’d gone to that party together and I got angry that he hit on you even though you were my soulmate. After that, I started realizing I would look for glimpses of the mark and be disappointed when I didn’t see it. I figured that had to mean something. So I started talking to people, trying to figure out what I was feeling. That’s where I was today. Jake had a friend, Aradia, who’s romantic soulmate used to be her platonic soulmate. I didn’t want to… do anything or tell you anything until I was pretty sure.” 

“What if… what if your mark hadn’t changed when you kissed me?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.”

“What?”

“People with mismatched marks fall in love. It happens.” 

“Wait… you…?”

“I love you. I would have still been in love with you if my mark didn’t change. It wouldn’t have been the first time the universe made a mistake.” 

“I love you too.” 

“I know.” 

“Oh no, don’t Han Solo me, you dickbag.” Roxy snorted, rolling her eyes. But her face softened, and she tucked herself into Dirk’s lap, pressing her lips against the scars on his neck from the accident, again and again until it was hidden under a shower of lipstick smudges. “I always wanted to do that.” she whispered. 

“Turnabout’s fair play.” Dirk murmured, sliding out from under her easily and pushing her shirt up, kissing every inch of scar tissue on her stomach. “I will never let anyone you don’t want to touch you touch you ever again.” he said quietly into her skin. Roxy shivered beneath him, and tugged him back up to her face by his shoulders, leaning in for another kiss. 

“I love you.” she says again, enjoying the novelty. Dirk smiles, really smiles, and his eyes are sunrise bright. 

“I love you too.” 

The next day, Dirk indulged one of Roxy’s oldest fantasies. He took her phone from her, while she lay on her stomach, tangled in his sheets, but the sword down her spine clearly visible. He snapped a picture, rolled his eyes, and threw the phone onto the bed, crawling under the covers himself so Roxy could snap a matching picture of the molecular models on his back. 

“You know those are going to go totally viral because we both have famous family members.”

“I’m aware. It’s fine, I’ve always wanted to be a real life fairytale.” she smirked and stuck her tongue out, and Dirk rolled his eyes again but put an arm around her shoulder, tugging her into his side. 

“You’re such a nerd.” 

“Says the guy who’s name literally basically rhymes with dork.” she shot back, cuddling into his lap as she tapped away on instagram. 

“Now, if you’re done bragging about me to your hundreds of devoted followers, I believe we still have a lot of catching up to do.” he said quietly into the skin of her neck before biting down on her shoulder. Roxy squealed and giggled, dropping her phone to the side as she spun around to face him. 

“Yes, I believe you’re right.”

**Author's Note:**

> Gosh, I meant this to just be a little thing, and it spiralled out of control. Hope you all enjoyed it!


End file.
